Giving up
I have heard recently someone say that if you are seeking balance between your personal and professional life, it basically means that you have given up. The person who said that was one of those Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs who most seem to admire/envy.
It is clear that those who agree with such an assertion have set for themselves very high goals in terms of professional success. They must also have high levels of self-confidence in order to believe that they can reach them by investing long hours of hard work into their dreams. I have no problems with that and I wish them well.
However, putting long hours of work into a project is not really hard for those of us who happen to enjoy their work. In fact, when I program, time simply flies. Therefore, if I had to spend all my day working on a personal project, I wouldn’t call it a sacrifice, on the contrary. So, in theory, for me and everyone out there who have a passion and are good at it, it should be easy to fight for success and riches.
The question is, do we really need to focus on a single objective and sacrifice everything else in order to achieve success? I really cannot agree with such a statement. Success is not an absolute, we define it ourselves and everyone uses different metrics to measure it. For me, in order to consider myself successful, I need to be successful at work as a manager, I have to be able to prove myself technically constantly by writing computer programs and, last but certainly not least, I need to spend quality time with my family and friends. If I feel that I am failing in any of these three aspects of my life, I start to worry and devote more time to fix the problems. It is true that I could probably achieve more in any of these aspects by focusing just on one of them instead of all three, but I do not want to. That doesn’t mean at all that I am giving up, it just means that I am fighting three battles instead of just one. That is a personal choice, and I am totally comfortable with it.
Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I do not agree over the assertion that we must focus on a single objective in order to be successful in life does not mean that I condone giving up, on the contrary. We all know people who have lost interest in almost everything, spending their days watching TV and apparently just waiting for death to come, while in their 30s or 40s. That is totally depressing. For me, giving up means not having any passions and watching life pass by. That can happen to anyone, no matter how hard you work.